Pamela Foa: How can anyone vote for a man like Trump?

Sunday

Oct 16, 2016 at 2:01 AM

What have we come to? Have we lost our moral compass, lost any sense of humanity in the way we view each other, reach out to each other, and respect each other? What Trump has made clear (“Trump’s lewd boasts about women captured on tape,” news, Oct. 8) is that that if we are not useful to his end, we are nothing. Each of us is someone to exploit for sex if we are female, or someone to stiff on a debt.

A woman, a Muslim, an employee; we are fungible and without value. All that matters is his effort to amass power, in the style of Russia’s Vladimir Putin. It is discouraging, disheartening and sickening. A man without any sense of morality, who fails to demonstrate the respect we owe each other, cannot project the dignity and empathy we demand of our presidents. Trump is a man whose immorality and whose insensitivity knows no bound.

None of us is a saint, but Trump is a malevolent narcissist who appeals to the worst in us. We must speak out against him; we must express our rage, distress and horror. We must use the moment to take a stand, to rise to a new level of civility and decency. If we do not, we shame ourselves, we shame our founding fathers, and create despair in all those who have looked to the United States as a place of hope.

Pamela Foa

Providence

The writer is a senior fellow in gender studies at Brown University’s Pembroke Center.